More leadership roles for women may boost companies' profits

A new case for gender diversity might be catching companies' ears –– it points to profits.

A recent study found net profit margins were up to 6 percent higher for companies where women made up at least 30 percent of leaders compared to companies with no women leaders.

One-third of the roughly 22,000 companies in the sample had no women on either their boards or as chief officers. Less than 5 percent of the companies had a female CEO.

Statistically, higher profits weren't strongly linked to having a female CEO or board members but having more women in leadership positions, in general, was.

Since the study is correlational, it's still unclear if the women caused the higher profits or if higher profits led to more women being promoted to leadership positions.

Click through some notable female CEO's:

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Notable Women CEO's

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More leadership roles for women may boost companies' profits

Carol Meyrowitz

TJX Companies

(Photo by Essdras M Suarez/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Ursula M. Burns

Xerox

(Photo by Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images)

Beth Mooney, chief executive officer of KeyCorp, speaks during an interview in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012. KeyCorp, which has 1,059 branches, is targeting $150 million to $200 million of expense reductions by December 2013, the Cleveland-based lender said in a statement. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Lynn Good, president and chief executive officer of Duke Energy Corp., listens during an interview in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016. Duke is moving to a lower carbon future regardless of who is in the White House, Good said. Photographer: Cassi Alexandra/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Out of the 91 countries whose companies were included in the study, the top 10 economies offered 11 times more paternity leave days than the 10 worst performing economies. Paternity leave also correlated with more female board members.

The researchers argue more paternity days leads men to take a more equal share of childcare responsibilities. This, in turn, gives women more chances to work and be promoted to leadership positions.